


For Love of Tusks

by Catzgirl



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, clearing out my wips folder, i'm not super sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 12:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15437394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catzgirl/pseuds/Catzgirl
Summary: Fjord kills two birds with one stone.





	For Love of Tusks

**Author's Note:**

> I bet this isn't how yall thought I'd end my hiatus, huh?

It's not until the pliers are actually in his mouth that he starts to have second thoughts. The metal is cold against the inside of his lip, against his sweaty palm. It's as he sets the head of them against the root of his tusk that he hesitates. 

"There a problem, boy?" Human, pale, also short and stumpy but of the sort that speaks to decadence rather than Fjord's general misalignment. "You need me to do it myself?" 

Something redhot and angry rears up in him at that, but he's an old study at beating it back down. The orc has never done anything for him, nothing good anyway. The tusks are a reminder: who would ever have him for a mate? Who would ever want to be marked by such a scrawny runt? 

The orc has never done anything for him. This will bring him a step closer to human. 

"I've got it," he says, but with the pliers in his mouth it comes out something garbled and nonsense. The human takes a step forward as if he really is willing to be the one to do it, but— 

He's fifteen. He's not the child he once was. He can do it himself. "I've  _got_  it," he says, or tries to say, and gives the human a look that he hopes conveys  _I mean business_ , and then, before he can second guess himself any further: Hard and fast he rips the tusk out of his own skull. 

The pain is immediate and overwhelming. 

The pliers and the tusk itself clatter to the ground as Fjord goes to his knees, both hands on his face, and his scream is a muffled and gurgling thing as blood pours down the back of his throat. Something redhot and angry is rearing its head but he doesn't have the clarity to mind it as pain blossoms throughout his jaw, throughout his head, down into the muscles of his neck, and it is not the pain of the Blooded orcs taunting and whaling on him when the mistresses aren't paying attention, this is something big. 

His hands hold at his face and he feels hot and wet and iron leaking between his lips, kneeling on the damp cobblestones as the human squats and retrieves his quarry. 

"Yes," the man says, wiping the root of the tusk against one sleeve. There's bits of Fjord still hanging to it and the man sets it to a coat pocket for later, cuts his eyes back at Fjord. Offers the pliers again. "They're worthless," he says, "Without the matched pair." 

The redhot within him is roaring, but for what? What's his orc side ever done for him but gotten him beaten and bruised? What's it ever done for him but gotten him spit on and despised? 

 _Half-blood_ they call him  _runt_  they say  _look at him, look at him try_  because he's never been as strong as the hulk of him would suggest, never had the innate talent for hand-to-hand that the other's use against him. 

"You got the next one as well? Little late to be backing out," and Fjord snatches the pliers from the human's pudgy, sausage-fingered hand even as blood dribbles down his chin and tears smart in his eyes. 

It hurts. It's the worst pain he's ever had, and that's really something in the life of an unwanted little bastard like him. But it doesn't hurt as much as his reflection. The sight of white bone curling up and out of his mouth, the indents they've pushed into his bottom lip: they are a reminder every moment of every day of all the things he will not have. A wife to protect, a home to build, children to sire. No one will ever want a man like him, a man with his weakness and stunted growth and— 

He needs the money. The most important thing is that he needs the money more than he needs the tusks. 

There's a steady stream as he opens his mouth, and he's expecting it so he moves his hand through the throbbing pain and his own blood and gets the head of the pliers on his remain tusk. He clamps down, and there's tears in Fjord's eyes still because now he  _knows_ , now he's  _familiar_  with what this will cost him. 

"I really do not mean to rush you," the human says, dabbing a handkerchief at his forehead, "But this is rather dragging on, don't you think?" 

He can't breathe, he can't breathe, there's blood in his throat and something  _angry_  in his veins and he can't breathe but his hand works as well as it ever has when he clenches and  _pulls_ — 

"That's the spirit, my boy!" Fingers—white and pale and too thick, too stubby, as all of Fjord is—are gently but insistently prying the pliers from his clinched fist, the tusk. "Look here, just because you've been such a good sport about it," and there's gauze unspooling before him, in his line of vision, hazy and unfocused as it is, "Pack the holes with it and the bleeding should stop in an hour or so." 

"Money," he says, but his mouth is already swollen, his entire jaw is inflamed and throbbing, so it comes out more like "munef," than anything else. 

The human pats at a different pocket of his black coat, grins at Fjord as though he is a dog that has performed a trick particularly well, says, "Of course, of course. With a slight deduction. For the undue time, you see." 

Anger and hatred and redhot and  ** _kill him_** and  ** _what have you done_** and  ** _tusksless_** ** _, bloodless runt_** and it's lucky for this shitty human that Fjord is an old study at beating this down, at smothering the orc inside him. He only lifts a hand, takes the coin purse offered, and begins to stuff the holes where his tusks once were as the human disappears into the night. 

Later, he stands deep in the belly of the ship in the washroom and looks into the mirror. His jaw is swollen, his mouth is swollen, there are indents still against his lower lip where for years the unyielding ivory bones of his tusks have pressed. 

The taste of iron is still in his mouth, though the gauze is long gone. Fjord presses at his lip, wonders if the indents will ever go away. If they will stay as a testament to the price he's been willing to pay. 

"Gods preserve me," he whispers to himself, cringes at his own reflection—wrong, all wrong. His face seems hallow, seems two-dimensional without the curve of his tusks, the shadows they'd cast on his chin and cheeks. He looks into the mirror and sees a stranger, sees a half-orc boy who will never grow into his short and stumpy body, who will never have the sort of handsome face and toned body that a mate would want. 

He wants to smash the mirror. He wants to smash himself apart at the seams. Instead he looks into his own eyes, lets his tongue go thick and heavy in his mouth, drawls, " _How do_ _ya_ _do, ma'am_ ," in something as far from his own voice as he can get, in words that drip and drool around the edges. 

The effect is instant. The face that stares back at him, flat and unexpressive and puffy around the edges, becomes a mask. At the Home they'd seen plays sometimes: stupid little copper shows, with players that had stumbled more often than they strut, who wore masks and affected accents to conceal themselves and their characters. 

Beneath him the ship rocks. He's gotten passage to the Menagerie Coasts and all the wonders of the world laid at his feet. But what can one stunted half-orc accomplish, what can he do as weak and shriveled as he is? 

" _Put '_ _er_ _there, pal_ ," and it's a stupid thing to say, it's a meaningless line, but the accent? The accent he likes. The accent belongs to someone older, someone more experienced, someone who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. The accent changes his face from squished and ruddy into haggard, into the face of a working man. The accent is a gateway to a role, to a character, to being the sort of person that works on a ship rather than the type that pries his tusks out to secure passage. 

The accent will get him through this. If he's careful. If he's clever. 

" _We're_ _gonna_ _make this work_ ," he tells his reflection, and the face that smiles back at him isn't one he knows, but it's one that he could grow to like. 

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanna do a fix-it chapter for this, but it's been sitting in my wips folder for forever and I just was sick of looking at it, so here it is I guess? Tags'll change if I eventually add to it.


End file.
